Quoted from Lindsey:I used these a lot when they first came out and never had a problem. If someone DID have a problem, the solution would be to bypass the blocking diode.
Same here....we used these a lot without any problems before they became hard to obtain and (too) expensive a few years ago. The only time I had problems was with a bad quality batch from China, 50% didn't make the tests with my Eprom programmer. After that I started experimenting with Simtek devices.
Marco